Res Gestae

Ammianus Marcellinus

Ammianus Marcellinus. Ammianus Marcellinus, with an English translation, Vols. I-III. Rolfe, John C., translator. Cambridge, MA; London: Harvard University Press; W. Heinemann, 1935-1940 (printing).

At length, however, Aprunculus, a Gallic orator skilled in soothsaying, afterwards advanced to be governor of Gallia Narbonensis, told him what would happen, having learned it (as he himself declared) from the inspection of a liver which he had seen covered with a double lobe.[*](Cf. Pliny, N.H. xi. 190; Suet. Aug. 96.) And although Julian feared that it might be a fiction conformable to his own desire, and was therefore troubled, he himself saw a much more evident sign which clearly foretold the death of Constantius. For at the very moment when that emperor died in Cilicia, a soldier who lifted Julian with his right hand to mount his horse slipped and fell to the ground; and Julian at once cried in the hearing of many: The man has fallen who raised me to my high estate.